Opinion

Editorial: Reaffirming our independence

John Adams, revolutionary and second U.S. president, wrote to his wife, Abigail, that Independence Day ought to be celebrated, “by pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other.”

The Inland Empire certainly is on the other end of the continent to the 13 original colonies. And there are celebrations galore today, including one of the largest in California at 7 p.m. at the stadium of the University of Redlands. Gates open at 6 p.m.; tickets are $10, with revolutionaries under the age of 3 free. People also will be celebrating with their own fireworks — but be careful out there.

Aside from the revelry and the fun, here are a few things that resonate for us today, here in the Inland Empire, in California, in America.

Some critics say the Declaration of Independence was only for a bunch of white property owners, some of them slaveholders, in 1776. But that’s not fair. Every time has its virtues and sins.

What’s enduring about the Declaration is its universality; that it was a beginning of our struggle for liberty, not an end. In a speech given in Rochester, N.Y. on July 5, 1852, abolitionist Frederick Douglass celebrated the 76 years of the nation’s independence. He asked, “Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? That he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it” — a reference to the Declaration of Independence. “There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.”

It was such irrefutable arguments, based on the Declaration, that gave resonance to the calls to end slavery by Douglass and other abolitionists. Thirteen years later, after a long and deadly Civil War, slavery was finally abolished with the Thirteenth Amendment.

Given that our editorial page is dedicated to advancing liberty, the Declaration remains not just a document under glass in the National Archives in Washington, D.C., but a living call to freedom. The words still ring out: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Of course, these days “equality” means all people. But “equality” doesn’t mean everyone has the same height, musical ability or athletic prowess. Rather, everyone is equal in human dignity and worth as a person, and possesses the same “unalienable Rights.”

But the Declaration also contains a specific list decrying the “injuries and usurpations” of the tyrant of the day, King George III. Nowadays people somehow forget that. Let’s remember a charge that still remains a charge against all levels of government, “He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.” That sounds like numerous government offices today, from the National Security Agency snooping on everybody, to the lethargy of the California DMV when you renew your driver’s license, to local school officials being unresponsive to parental demands. As to tax levels — “eat out their substance” — California’s state income and sales taxes are now the highest in the nation.

A fundamental principle of Independence Day is that the people themselves, not distant and officious government bureaucrats, best decide how to run their own lives. Government’s only role, the Declaration insists, is “to secure these rights,” otherwise leaving us alone. After today’s pyrotechnics, let us go forth and do so with a new dedication.

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